‘Ferrell Takes The Field’ Is A Hilarious Sports Comedy With A Cause

We all know and love Will Ferrell for his kooky characters and hilarious movies, but did you also know that he was a Major League Baseball star? Well, he played for the Major Leagues. Briefly. Back in the spring. Well, sort of.

The new HBO comedy special Ferrell Takes The Field follows the funnyman’s brief stint as a professional ball player. Last March, Ferrell crashed the MLB’s spring training. He joined the ranks of five different teams in an effort to prepare himself for a bold stunt in the name of cancer research. On September 8, 1965, famed baseball player Bert Campaneris became the first man to play nine different positions in a major league game. While the feat has been matched by a handful of heavy hitters, Ferrell decided to take the challenge up himself. On March 12, 2015, Ferrell played ten different positions for ten different teams in the space of one day. And you can see how well he does when Ferrell Takes The Field airs tonight on HBO.

In the last year, HBO has distinguished itself with a series of sports-oriented comedy successes. There was the first season of the raucous football comedy Ballers and the insanely brilliant tennis satire 7 Days In Hell. Ferrell’s comedy special has the distinction though of being not only a document of real-life sports history, but it’s also the only one made for a good cause. Like we said before, Ferrell didn’t just do this to fulfill a childhood dream; he did it to raise awareness for the fight against cancer. Ferrell’s college friend, Craig Pollard, was an up-and-coming baseball star until a battle with the illness derailed his career. Ferrell Takes The Field was filmed to help Pollard’s organization, Cancer for College.